Mix-Up!, Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Have you ever had a cooking or baking fiasco? These Holiday Rocks may look perfectly normal, but peer a bit closer — they are blonder than the delicious Rocks that Mom makes. And the taste buds don’t lie! They were bitter and a LOT drier. We made the mistake of using year-old nuts from the freezer, whole wheat flour from last year’s Holiday baking, and (the icing on the cake) we grabbed the baking powder when we should have added baking soda.
What’s the difference between baking soda and baking powder? Baking soda is bicarbonate of soda (NaHCO3) which when combined with an acidic ingredient, such as vinegar or the lactic acid in buttermilk (the sour milk in traditional Rocks), releases carbon dioxide which forms into bubbles in the food. Baking powder contains baking soda along with cream of tartar and a starch. The mixture of baking soda and an acid in powdered form, combine in liquid to create the same reaction.
According to Kitchen Savvy, baking soda, combined with an equal measure of cornstarch and twice as much cream of tartar, can be used to replace baking powder. However, baking powder generally should not be substituted for baking soda since this will leave excess acidic compounds in the food which may affect flavor, texture and color. Whoops!
Did I mention our Rocks were also bitter? Part of the bitterness was from the baking powder. The other part was because the pecans had been in the freezer for a year and had gone a bit rancid. We threw the first batch of Rocks out (the squirrels loved them!) and took a trip to the store for new ingredients.
It wasn’t until the second batch that we discovered we had used the baking powder instead of the baking soda. Round two tasted alright (and we did eat them all) but they were dry and crumbly and the dates were chewy.
On top of all that, we tried to make Frito Pie over Thanksgiving and, guess what, the pinto beans never got soft. We soaked them overnight, then simmered them over 7 hours. When Liz mentioned it to her mom, she told us if beans are too old, they never get soft, no matter how much you cook them. Back to the store for fresh pintos!
Tis the season to spread a little Holiday food cheer and most people are cooking up a storm. We touched on cooking fiascos in the comments on one of our Thanksgiving posts. Care to share the times when your cooking or baking flopped, fell, melted, stiffened, or took a dive?
If you don’t have any culinary nightmares, when’s the last time you had a good food fight? (One of my favorites is from the movie Fried Green Tomatoes.)
Grab a line for a Writing Practice, then, 10 minutes, Go!
My first cooking fiasco…..
My first food fight….
The last time I bombed in the kitchen…
-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
I can’t think of anything too epic on the fail meter…but I did recently have an experience with old ingredients when I made a batch of Bisquick basic biscuits with a box that may have been up to 5 years old? Turns out that might have a negative impact on the recipe 🙂 The biscuits never puffed up and were also a little bitter. Lesson learned!
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My biggest fiasco was a cake I made many years ago. I didn’t add the correct amount of flour & also forgot to add the baking powder. It looked more like a pancake, but I iced it anyway. No one ate it! Now it’s only pre-boxed cake mixes for me. (love you Betty Crocker!) Baking is not my claim to fame!
My most recent disaster was forgetting to put egg into my holiday stuffing mix. The turkey was in the oven for about 3 hours before I even gave it a thought. Too late, the stuffing turned into a pile of mush. D
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Ah, took a little time off last night and am just checking in today!
goddess, yeah, I think I’ve done that one before, too! Liz and I went through the cupboards after the Rocks last week and got rid of all the old stuff. It turns out we really only bake a lot around this time of year. Otherwise it’s sporadic!
diddy, so I take it the egg was supposed to add a little poofffff to the stuffing. I don’t think about cooking in terms of chemical reactions very much but reading about the baking soda and powder and made me start to pay attention to that more. Rising and falling. Good food is a lot about texture as well as taste.
We haven’t planned our Holiday meals yet but probably need to think about that soon. What are you going to be making over the Holidays?
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The egg is like that glue that binds the stuffing to hold it together.
For the Holidays I plan on making a London Broil (french dip style), mac-n-cheese, & baked corn. These are things I know the kids will eat. D
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Yum, London Broil! And your famous mac-n-cheese. You are making my mouth water. 8)
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My biggest cooking fiasco was during a time of dieting. I think the act of dieting caused my brain synapses to misfire. I tried a diet recipe for baking fresh fish in apple cider vinegar. I sat the baking dish in the center of the table. Everyone helped themselves to the fish. I took the first bite…YUCK!!! HORRIBLE!!! I collected everyone’s plates, carried them to the kitchen, dumped the rest of the fish, and took everyone out to Chinese. End of diet fish dish, end of diet.
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Oh, Bob, that makes my brain hurt. I can’t handle fish anyway (See haiku for Stella’s) but the combo of apple cider vinegar and fish just doesn’t go together. Taking everyone out to Chinese afterwards reminds me of the fiasco in A Christmas Story. It wasn’t during the cooking but after and involved a hungry dog!
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Oh, BTW, there are some great links about Bob Clark, the director of 1983’s A Christmas Story, and Jean Shepherd (the narrator and adult voice of Ralph Parker in A Christmas Story) in a post I did last year – On Eating December Snowflakes (LINK). You can also see one of my faves there — Charlie Brown.
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Well, actually, fish and chips is most wonderful dipped in vinegar. And Jim does this wonderful grilled chicken plate with a seasoning sauce of apple cider vinegar and chile flakes. Yum. Hmmm, making myself hungry.
Hi QM. Just checking in from one of the several airports I’ll be in today. I’m jet-lagged but improving.
I have made some not-so-good baked goods. For some reason baked is always trickier than plain ol’ grilled or sauteed. I’m glad you gave the background on the difference between baking powder and soda. I often find myself without the right one.
No recent baking fiascos that spring to mind, although with my jetlagged synapses, it’s not like my mind is actually a mind at the moment. Will think about it this weekend. I’m sure I’ve burned or messed up something!
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Howdy, ybonesy. Great to hear from you. Can’t wait to hear about the rest of your trip. And hope the rest of your travel day goes well.
Now that you put it that way, I guess it makes sense to combine vinegar and fish. At least to the Brits. I do like apple cider vinegar though. And I like most things that are pickled, especially pickled beets. Liz and I visited a new Jewish deli around these parts this week and the first thing they brought out was a plate of pickled green tomatoes, cucumbers, and of course, kosher dills. They also had a big vat of pickled eggs at the check-out. It’s a great place to eat BTW. I’ll be back there tonight with a friend. 8)
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After nearly a half century of cooking I’ve had a few fiascos. Most, like childbirth, have mercifully blurred into the background, but the chocolate stew from the very early days of wedlock will never be forgotten. The recipe came from a booklet of classic New Mexico recipes from the New Mexico State Extension service, and one of my aunts was the editor. I’ve forgotten the formal name of the dish, but I’m assuming it was some form of molé. The two ingredients I remember were beef stew meat and chocolate. Maybe the meat was a bit rancid. Maybe I missed something else critical. Maybe both. In any event, even though on our grad student budget, every single penny counted, neither of us could eat that stew. I committed the mortal sin of throwing food out. Not good food. Just food. It was worth it for the story.
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QM, next time you make Frito Pie, make sure that you don’t let the pinto beans boil. Boiling them will make them tough. Let them simmer just below boil, for three or four hours, maybe more depending on whether you soaked them overnight.
I bet the ones you made for T-day were quite the musical fruit. 8) 8)
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Hehe. This post made me laugh a whole lot.
I have a few cooking fiascoes!! And I was glad that I didn’t ruin any food for the holidays. That would’ve been terrible since my family loves food. We especially love trying different kinds of dishes and cuisines. 🙂
I’m going to work on this post and post it here for everyone to read. 🙂
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ritergal, that chocolate mole sounds questionable. I never had mole until one of my first trips to New Mexico. Recently, a friend ordered it at an authentic Mexican restaurant on Eat Street in Minneapolis. You know, I have heard of the chocolate version but never tasted it.
A~Lotus, looking forward to hearing about your cooking fiasco. They do turn out funny after-the-fact!
I have a recent Thanksgiving story about a baking fiasco. A friend of Liz’s (I’ll call her June) mother-in-law was supposed to make an apple pie for Thanksgiving. She didn’t have the apples, sent June to the store to get them, which she did. Later, the mother-in-law burned the pie and blamed June saying June didn’t get the right kind of apples. I guess that’s how mother-in-laws get a bad rap. There are other stories connected to this particular one. I think she’s a bit on the loony side.
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ybonesy, we were sure to follow your instructions about cooking the pinto beans VERY SLOWLY for the Frito Pie. We never boiled them so that’s why we were so puzzled about why the beans never got soft. About that time, Liz was talking to her Mom and we discovered that in our particular case, the beans were just too darned old.
BTW, it is tempting to boil them to cook them faster. But this time, we followed your recipe to the T (except for the gobs of raw onions which our stomachs don’t handle well). 8)
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BAHAHWAAWAAA…cooking disasters…
Man am I glad my family and friends don’t read this!
My oven (5 years new) holds my jewelry, laptop and the instruction manual inside!
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Uh oh! Today will be my day to attempt baking my holiday cookies. I even bought 3 new cookie pans for this. I feel a fiasco is just waiting to happen! D
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heather, LOL, I read your comment to Liz this morning and we both cracked up!
diddy, I’ll be thinking about you. We will be baking Mom’s Rocks (again) this Saturday for a Winter Solstice gathering on Sunday. I think I may make something else, too, not sure what yet. This time we will be sure to get the baking soda right!
BTW, Liz told our baking powder vs. baking soda saga to a friend of hers at work who bakes all the time and she said, “Don’t feel bad. I’ve done that before!” So we felt a little better. I doubt if we’ll make that mistake again.
Hey, what kind of cookies are you baking? We baked a box recipe of Ghirardelli Chocolate Syrup brownies last night. They were really good and little room for error. Yum!
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Hiding your laptop in your oven?! That’s an excellent idea. I’m always searching around the house for a good hiding place for my laptop whenever I leave town without it. Thanks, H!!
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LOL, I was laughing at anuvuestudio’s comment too. I’m sure the oven is a great hiding place for lots of things!! I mean, who would’ve ever thought to hide things there? Most people would hide things in their closet, the attic/basement, or under their beds. 😀
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Here’s my fiasco! 🙂
http://alotus-poetry.livejournal.com/46372.html
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[…] -related to Topic post: WRITING TOPIC – COOKING FIASCOS […]
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[…] -related to Topic post: WRITING TOPIC – COOKING FIASCOS […]
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Since reading this post, I’ve started to look askance at all the food I have on my shelves and in the freezer. When I walk through the grocery store, I consider why I’m buying more food. Shouldn’t I be eating what’s on the shelves before everything is stale and will no longer cook properly?
You’ve inspired me. It’s a way to live responsibly, too. Eating what I’ve bought before I buy more. Eating what I have until waiting until it’s old, and then needing to throw it out.
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Sinclair, it’s so easy to let things sit in the cupboard, or in the fridge, only to realize that a few years have gone by. This recent fiasco with baking the Rocks with old pecans from the freezer and trying to make Frito Pie with old beans in the cupboard has woken us up, too.
We went and threw out a lot of the old stuff from our cupboards after that happened. And tried to stock with fresher items. Then just last week, I was asking what we’d have for dinner and should we stop at the store. It was Liz who said, “I think we’ve got a lot in the cupboard we could use up.” And it was true. I got home and made something we already had on hand. I’ve been much more aware of this lately.
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[…] Place a partially filled box of baking soda on the refrigerator shelf. Replace every 2 months. Pour the contents of the used box down the drain to remove odors and keep the drain clean. Baking soda can also be used to deodorize bottles by filling them with undiluted baking soda and allowing the bottles to soak overnight. Then wash as usual. (To read about the difference between baking soda and baking powder, see WRITING TOPIC — COOKING FIASCOS.) […]
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